Steam is used as a primary energy source for various industrial plants. The steam is typically generated by boilers and supplied within the steam distribution network to steam headers having different pressures. The headers in turn allocate the steam to the different plant units. As the flow demand for downstream process units often varies, control systems are used to ensure pressure stability in the headers. For this purpose, steam lines provided between the headers are manipulated to control the pressure levels. However, the steam lines follow complex pathways and sub-networks and traditional methods used for pressure control tend to manipulate inlet and outlet flows by focusing on a punctual offset regardless of the origin or destination of the flows. Moreover, known control systems usually rely heavily on pressure reducing valves at the expense of economic optimization. This ultimately decreases the potential revenue of the plant, thus making the on-line process decisions less economically viable.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved pressure control system.